M: What is the legality of Congress instituting penalties for various offenses against the Constitution taken by themselves as a member or other agencies, such as the executive or judicial? To clarify the question, what I'm asking is that if you look online, you will see that there are so many fucking things that are being done by this administration where even if someone were to attempt to hold them to account, there really is no prescribed penalty outside of impeachment. And as you might be able to detect, impeachment has become a kind of hollow shell of a threat at this point. So what would be the potential legal recourse for Congress imposing some sort of penalties or fines or something upon other people or themselves for just completely abdicating any kind of adherence to the Constitution?
G: TL;DR:
Yes, Congress can create statutory penalties for many
constitutional violations, but only within limits. It
cannot simply declare “violating the Constitution = fine or
jail” across the board, because separation-of-powers rules and
due-process requirements prevent that. What it can do is pass
laws that operationalize constitutional duties and
attach civil, criminal, funding, or structural
penalties to violations of those statutes. In practice,
Congress has often failed to do this, leaving impeachment as the only
explicit enforcement tool for many constitutional norms.
The Constitution is mostly normative, not self-executing.
Example:
These are rules, but they don’t specify enforcement mechanisms.
So enforcement usually comes from:
But the Constitution rarely specifies penalties.
This is why you’re noticing the gap.
Congress already does this in many places.
Examples:
Congress passed laws like:
This allows people to sue government officials personally for violating constitutional rights.
That statute is basically Congress saying:
If you violate constitutional rights under color of law, you can be sued.
So Congress already creates penalties attached to constitutional violations.
Examples include:
These allow criminal prosecution of officials who violate constitutional rights.
Again, Congress created these.
Because several constitutional limits stop them.
Congress cannot:
This was settled in United States v. Lovett (1946) and earlier Bill of Attainder cases.
Congress cannot pass a law that says:
“Anyone who violates Article X shall be fined $10,000.”
because:
Criminal penalties must define:
A blanket “violating the Constitution” statute would be unconstitutionally vague.
Congress cannot impose penalties on judges for judicial decisions.
The Constitution explicitly says federal judges serve during good behavior.
The only removal mechanism is:
impeachment.
Here’s the important point:
Congress has far more power than it uses.
It could legally pass laws like:
Hypothetical statute:
or
This would be constitutional if carefully written, because it targets:
This is actually their most powerful enforcement tool.
Article I gives Congress full authority over appropriations.
They can say:
No funds may be used for X action.
Violation of appropriations law is illegal and potentially criminal.
Congress often fails to enforce this aggressively.
The Constitution itself does this in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment:
Anyone who engages in insurrection after taking an oath cannot hold office.
Congress can create procedures to enforce that.
They’ve rarely done so.
The framers assumed political enforcement, not legal enforcement.
Their model was:
They did not anticipate modern partisan lockstep.
So impeachment becoming hollow breaks one of the system’s main safety valves.
There is one class of constitutional violation that Congress cannot punish by statute:
core constitutional powers of another branch.
Examples:
Congress cannot criminalize:
because those are constitutional functions themselves.
The U.S. constitutional system contains a huge enforcement vacuum.
Many constitutional obligations are:
Which means if political enforcement collapses, nothing automatic replaces it.
That’s the gap you’re noticing.
Congress could pass a statute that:
Essentially turning parts of the Constitution into statutory code.
That would be legally defensible if carefully drafted.
If you want, I can also walk through a much more interesting question that sits behind your argument:
whether Congress could create a general “constitutional tort” statute covering most violations by federal officials.
That idea gets surprisingly close to what you were suggesting.